


Temper

by Pennyplainknits



Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Best Friends, Chocolate, F/M, Food, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennyplainknits/pseuds/Pennyplainknits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> It had become a game over the years, making candy to fit different people, summing up what he loved about them in sugar and chocolate.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Ryan Ross owns a chocolate shop and has people who love him. For <span class="ljuser"></span><a href="http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/"></a><b>paperclipbitch</b></p><p>You can find recipes for some of what Ryan makes <a href="http://pennyplainknits.dreamwidth.org/212899.html">here.</a></p><p>Beta by melusina</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperclipbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/gifts).



Of course, it all started with Spencer. Spencer and his bright idea, age 12, to make his Mom actual chocolates for Mother's Day. Since there was no way Ryan was going to get his own mother a gift, and since Spencer's Mom was everything he felt a Mom should be, he volunteered to help.

The kitchen was a mess of spilled cocoa and burned cream, and the resulting handful of brown lumps looked like something only a mother could love. Luckily for them, she did.

Ryan would be the first to admit that he (and Spencer) had some perfectionist tendencies. It's what made Spencer such a good drummer, why Ryan shredded the tips of his fingers the year he started playing guitar. If a thing was worth doing, Ryan was going to be damn sure it got done to the best of his ability. And when that thing was _food_ well. Ginger's Mother's Day chocolates soon became something to see.

**

"What's this?" Spencer asked, one late night in their tiny apartment kitchen. Apparently college students weren't supposed to eat any food that needed actual cooking. It was too late too be making anything, Ryan had a 8am class, but he'd had the idea and wanted to try it out.

"Your marshmallows, if they turn out right," Ryan answered. It had become a game over the years, making candy to fit different people, summing up what he loved about them in sugar and chocolate.

"I thought the chocolate ginger crisps were mine?" Spencer said.

"They're your _mom's_ " Ryan said. “You just eat most of them."

"They're her favourites, I have to be quick to even get the chance," Spencer said. He stacked the bowl of the mixer together with the dirty cup measures into the sink, because Ryan had trained him well. "I've never seen you make marshmallows before."

"I think I made them that winter you went to Denver," Ryan said. "Without me."

"You still ended up staying at mine," Spencer said.

"Well, yeah," Ryan said, taking up the square pan and jiggling it to see if the mix had set. "You gave me house key and I needed the mixer." He upended the pan onto the sugar dusted board and the marshmallow fell out in a perfect square, pale ivory and light as air.

"Cool," Spencer said, poking at the block and watching it wobble. "I didn't even know you could make marshmallow."

"It's mostly whisking," Ryan said. He wetted the big kitchen knife and sliced the block, easing the sticky slices off the blade with his finger. He cut the other way until he had a pile of fat little cubes sitting on the board.

"Can I try?" Spencer said, hand hovering.

"Wait," Ryan said, and put the cubes into a Ziploc filled with powdered sugar and shook it until all the marshmallows were coated. He opened the bag with a puff of sugar and tipped them back out onto the plate.

"Go nuts," he said, and took one for himself.

"That's-" Spencer said, chewing "OK that's fucking delicious, but what is it?"

"Chai." Ryan said, licking the powdered sugar off his fingers before biting into the marshmallow. It tasted just as he'd hoped, cinnamon and clove and cardamom with the unexpected heat of black pepper and just enough bitterness to balance out all the sugar. The same combination of warmth and edge and comfort that meant 'Spencer' to him.

"I'm taking all these," Spencer said, and made grabby hands at the rest of them.

Ryan smiled. "You like it then?" he said, leaving the dishes til the morning and following Spencer out into their tiny shared bedroom.

"I like everything you make," Spencer said. "If the English degree doesn't work out, you could always set up shop."

"Yeah yeah." Ryan waved his hand because Spencer said that kind of thing all the time.

But he couldn't put the idea from his head, and when he looked up "starting a food-based business" in Spencer's Entrepreneurship text book, he found Spencer had already marked the page.

**

In the end, it was a society wedding that paid for the storefront, the business grown too big for Ryan's tiny kitchen and Etsy site. A candy buffet for three hundred of the couple's closest friends, gilded rose cremes, white chocolate discs engraved with entwined F's and S's, garrapiñadas, a nod to the groom's heritage, tiny pastel-coloured almonds delicate enough for the bride's fashionable friends. A solid week of work, new burns from the caramel, and a slight panic when the hall was so hot the chocolate started to melt before the air con kicked in.

The tiny store, tucked away on a San Francisco side street, made it all worth it.

"Do I want to know how you afforded the rent on this place?" Spencer asked as he wiped down the windows. His summer-freckled skin was streaked with dust. He had cobwebs in his hair. The painted shop name, _Plumage_ cast shadows through the glass.

"I'm not selling my body, if that's what you're worried about," Ryan said. He squeezed the mop out and went over the tile again.

"Who's selling who's body?" Brendon asked, pushing the door open. "What's the going rate these days?"

"No one," Ryan said. He held out the mop."Make yourself useful. If you can make smart remarks, you can mop. I have to clear the kitchen for the new fridge."

Brendon pouted, but he took the mop. Spencer had good taste in room-mates. Even if he did sing Depeche Mode as he worked.

**

 

Ryan met Z two days before Plumage opened, at a party full of smoke and music. It was her voice that turned his head, smokier than the air around him, then the bold red sweep of her lips, the mischievous glint in her eyes. They talked long into the night as the party wound down around them, tucked into a secret corner. The paper crowns they'd won as scrabble champions rustled as they bent their heads together.

"A sweet shop?" She asked, "like Willy Wonka?"

"Hopefully less creepy," Ryan said. "Though I always liked the idea of lickable wallpaper."

"You'll have to show me, when it's open," Z said, nudging her nose against his.

"But not now," Ryan said, turning his head to kiss her.

"Not now," she agreed.

 

Months later, when they'd burned out as lovers and slid into fond friendship, Z declared the smoked salt-sprinkled chocolate wafers the best thing she'd ever got out of a break up.

“I think I'm going to stay on as your muse,” she said, snapping the wafer between her teeth.

“Muses don't eat all my profits,” Ryan chided, but he didn't stop her reaching for a second wafer, or a third.

**

William tumbled into his life, and his store, tripping over his own feet and looking for “a gift for my lady, something as beautiful as she is.”

Ryan, who had a keen eye for beauty himself, bit his tongue on the suggestion of no clothes and a large, red, ribbon. Together they filled one of Ryan's boxes with violet creams and sugar roses, tiny pecan pralines, and gilded chocolate gingerbread hearts.

“It was a love token in medieval England,” Ryan said, breaking off a corner for William to try, “because the ginger was thought to inflame the senses.”

“Inflame?” William rolled the word around in his mouth like he enjoyed the taste of it.

“So they thought,” Ryan grinned, enjoying himself, watching William's long fingers, and the way his eyelashes fluttered when he tasted he samples Ryan gave him.

“Better give me two then,” William winked. “Just in case.”

**

“Why Plumage?” William asked the next week. He'd returned with his lady's “undying devotion” and an order for more violet cremes.

Ryan shrugged. “I like birds,” he said. “And it suggests something frivolous, beautiful. No-one needs chocolate to survive, but life's more fun with it.”

“And your own plumage is rather fine,” William said, twitching the red silk scarf back into place round Ryan's neck, hand lingering against his throat. “You're pretty as a peacock.”

Ryan paused, tucking the last chocolate into the box.

“Given that these are for I quote “the light of your life” should you really be flirting with me this much?”

“She knows I'll always come home,” William said, with an impish smile. “And I know how far I can go. I'll stop, if I'm making you uncomfortable. But you are. Both beautiful, and fascinating, and you make wonderful things. I'd like to get to know you better.”

Ryan laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “I can cope with that” he said.

William, it turned out, worked as a session musician for the string of little recording studios down the block. He wrote songs, and waited tables to make ends meet. Charmingly, Ryan was sure. He'd make a killing on tips. Spencer, for reasons Ryan couldn't initially work out, didn't take to him at _all_.

“He's always here,” Spencer complained.

“So are you,” Ryan pointed out. He grasped the cherry by the stalk and lowered it into the liquid fondant, twirling to get rid of the excess.

“I don't- it's not the same,” Spencer said. “The way you guys talk.”

“He has a girlfriend,” Ryan said, getting it. “I think they're actually married, he just doesn't like the ring.”

“And you still flirt,” Spencer said.

“Spence,” Ryan set the cherry on the wax paper and broke the couveture up to temper. “I'm not going to get my heart broken, It's not even dented. It's just _fun_. Stop worrying. I can make my own mistakes, and this isn't one.”

“Hmmm” Spencer filched one of the cherries Ryan had set aside. “Ooof, what _is_ this?”

“Cherry, soaked in _very good_ brandy,” Ryan said. “You're lucky I didn't need that one.

Spencer spit the pit into the palm of his hand. His tongue was stained pink.

“I _like_ William,” Ryan said. “I like his lady too. They're both great. You don't need to worry.”

William found Spencer's animosity hilarious and set about winning him over. And, as Ryan knew, when he put his mind to it, William could be very charming indeed.

Watching William eat the cherries, Ryan thought, was akin to watching highly specialised porn. He held the stem in clever fingers, cracked the chocolate shell precisely, tongued the syrupy, brandied centre, left flecks of sticky red on his mouth. He curled his tongue around his fingertips to chase the last of the chocolate, fluttered his eyelashes in pleasure and swallowed with a pleased little moan.

Spencer, sitting on the stool at the end of the counter, made a choked off noise, cheeks bright red.

Ryan just smiled, and held out the plate again.

**

"Three ounces of the- Wentz? The um, the feathers." The guy leaned forward to point at the chocolates under the glass. His glasses slipped down his nose and he straightened them. It looked like something he did a lot.

Ryan pulled the drawer forward and picked out one of the feathers, snapping it in half. He'd learned his lesson with this particular candy.

"You might want to try one, first," he said, holding it out. He let the other half of the feather melt on his tongue, tasting the first hot kick of chili, almost too much, too loud and brash. It faded away into comforting warmth, with the chocolate coming behind, dark and complex, almost fruity, a hint of smoke and coffee with the lingering notes of the chilli the last thing to go. It had taken weeks to perfect, the feather a nod to the name of the shop, and to another boy that wanted to fly away.

"Like I said," Ryan said, seeing the undecided look on the man's face,"they're an acquired taste"

The man smiled, crinkling up his green eyes. "So's Pete himself," he said. "I've always thought he was worth it."

"You're PATRICK," Ryan said, realising. "He talks about you. A lot."

"He does?" Patrick looked shocked, pleased, sad. "We haven't spoken in months. He doesn't know I'm in town. I don't even know if he would speak to me. I was surprised to see the name, but how many Wentz's can there be?"

"Like you said," Ryan said, putting together all the things Pete had told him, all the things he hadn't. "Pete's one of a kind." He dropped the feathers into a cellophane bag, careful not to break them. "You should take him these. As well as being named for him, they're his favourites."

Patrick pulled out his wallet.

"No," Ryan cursed his romantic streak even as he said it, "how about you pay me, if it doesn't work."

Patrick frowned at him, but took the bag with something like hope in his eyes.

Later, sitting on Spencer's sofa waiting for the lasagne to heat up, Ryan's phone buzzed

_thank u xo_

Followed by

_u might have another wedding to do ryro xoxo_

You look happy," Spencer said, as Ryan quickly texted you're welcome and put the phone back into his pocket.

"Patrick came into my store today," he said. Spencer slid two plates of lasagne onto the coffee table, scent of meat and cheese wafting up. Spencer was no chocolatier (not after that first attempt, years ago) but Ryan would be the first to admit he was better when it came to actual food.

"Patrick, as in Pete's Patrick?" Spencer said. He dug into his slice, steam rising up. His elbow jostled Ryan's.

"Yep," Ryan said. "That was Pete, saying thank you. I guess whatever happened between them they sorted it out."

"Branching out into matchmaking?" Spencer, licking the sauce off the corner of his mouth. Ryan swallowed his pasta.

"All I did was give Patrick some of Pete's chocolate," he said.

"That one blogger did say that your pomegranate truffles were enough to tempt Hades himself from the underworld," Spencer said. "Maybe your stuff should come with a warning: 'may cause happily ever after."

Ryan rolled his eyes "That's just Way and his purple prose," he said. "I've given you enough sweets over the years and you haven't proposed yet."

Spencer's foot nudged his on the coffee table. He was wearing Ryan's socks. "Maybe I would if I ever thought you were serious." The words were joking, but the tone wasn't. Ryan turned to look at Spencer, right at his side, like he always was. And really, it was as easy as that.

"What if I'm serious now?" he said, putting his plate down.

"I'd say, about time," Spencer said.

Ryan leaned across to kiss his best friend, already thinking about how this love would taste.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Temper podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545508) by [melusina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melusina/pseuds/melusina)




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